As others have stated, while he is correct on this issue, I wouldn’t look to Notch for his opinion on anything these days.
I honestly can’t even tell if Jennifer Gibbons (ESA VP of State Government Affairs who made the original statement) even has any idea what Private Servers are. It’s almost as if she was equating them to something like the community run WoW servers, which regardless of the morality argument, were in fact breaking ToS by circumventing WoW’s subscription fees.
In the case of Minecraft, that argument doesn’t apply. Minecraft has no online subscription. Private servers were the only way to even play online until Realms. While Mojang doesn’t officially support private server administration, they do provide downloads for the server binary and documentation on their official website. It’s not just allowed, it’s explicitly listed as a way to play.
Obviously they would prefer to push people toward Realms as an extra revenue stream, but the way multiplayer is architected in Minecraft makes this argument make zero sense.
I think the gaming community’s intuition on this one is correct in that she accidentally said the quiet part out loud:
The end state of the tech industry desired by corporations is one where copies of software and even the means to compute can no longer be owned, they must be rented from the gatekeepers–i.e. “You’ll own nothing and be happy.”
As others have stated, while he is correct on this issue, I wouldn’t look to Notch for his opinion on anything these days.
I honestly can’t even tell if Jennifer Gibbons (ESA VP of State Government Affairs who made the original statement) even has any idea what Private Servers are. It’s almost as if she was equating them to something like the community run WoW servers, which regardless of the morality argument, were in fact breaking ToS by circumventing WoW’s subscription fees.
In the case of Minecraft, that argument doesn’t apply. Minecraft has no online subscription. Private servers were the only way to even play online until Realms. While Mojang doesn’t officially support private server administration, they do provide downloads for the server binary and documentation on their official website. It’s not just allowed, it’s explicitly listed as a way to play.
Obviously they would prefer to push people toward Realms as an extra revenue stream, but the way multiplayer is architected in Minecraft makes this argument make zero sense.
I think the gaming community’s intuition on this one is correct in that she accidentally said the quiet part out loud:
The end state of the tech industry desired by corporations is one where copies of software and even the means to compute can no longer be owned, they must be rented from the gatekeepers–i.e. “You’ll own nothing and be happy.”